If you're reading this, your books are jealous.

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Occupy Montreal Shutdown

Fawkes and Cops - Photo Credit: Michelle Moore

The night of Thursday to Friday (24, 25) was one to remember. Restless and eventful, yet calm and collected was the overall tone of the evening. A General Assembly was held at 6:30pm as usual, this time to discuss how occupiers would react to the increasing possibility of police intervention.

The assembly continued on until around 10pm when people began to separate into groups according to where they stood on the issue. There were two opposing groups in disagreement as to how they would deal with police pressure.

The first, larger group decided they would clean up the park to maintain cooperation with the city. Their plan was to remove all tents and other structures, except for a couple symbolic tents which would be placed around the statue representing the occupy movements that were dismantled across Canada. 

The second group, comprised of about thirty people called themselves the Steve Committee and were determined not to leave without a fight. Their plan, which they followed through with when police arrived around 9am was to tie themselves to what was once the center of the camp, la cuisine du peuple. 

They were untied and carried off by police(literally for those who refused to walk), processed and then dropped off by an STM bus in random spots around Montreal. They claim that while in custody,without their knowledge, the police branded them with a mark visible only under a UV light.

While the police dismantled the camp and hauled away some of the protesters, the first group took photos from afar in support of the second group and adorned the site with artwork. All Steve Committee members have been released except for one known as Batman who regrettably, tried to hug a policeman which was interpreted as an act of aggression.

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Montreal Makes Excuses to Bring Occupy to an End

The Longhouse. Photo Credit: CBC 

Rather than openly condemning the Occupy Movement, the mayor of Montreal has consistently expressed his support while subsequently setting up road blocks for occupiers. 

Regulations about what the city deemed to be insecure structures were enforced and said wooden structures were taken down by occupiers on the deadline provided. The city had however given permission for occupiers to stay in tents. 

Claims made by Horticulture Montréal were also cause for difficulty when, three weeks after the movement began occupiers were advised to change the location of their tarps because "nothing must be tied to the tree any higher than the lowest branch."

The city and SPVM have also expressed concerns about the drug and alcohol problems on the site as well as the issue of homelessness. The response of Occupy Montréal is that these are societal problems present long before they set up camp and that these are some of the issues they are fighting to change. 

The mainstream media have gone so far as to suggest that someone may die, as was the case in Vancouver when a woman overdosed in her tent.  

Some are calling this a smear campaign against the Occupy Montréal movement, where the media, the city and the police work together to tarnish it's credibility. 

The fact is occupiers in the city of Montréal have respected every law and regulation the city has put forth in an attempt to discourage or weaken the movement. Events occurring in other cities around Canada should not be taken as precedent or used as an excuse to bring claims against this site.

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Considering the Copyright Law-Disney Connection

                                               Artists are inspired by the world around them, so it is only normal that they build off the work of others in developing their own projects. However copyright law sees things differently, calling those who 'borrow' ideas thieves, or pirates.

The Copyright Term Extension Act has made it so that works are protected an extra twenty years after the authors' death. That means they are protected for a total of seventy years after the fact, which to me seems a bit nonsensical.

An article entitled A Mickey Mouse Copyright Law? by Joyce Slaton on Wired.com argues that this extension, while limiting creative freedoms, does not benefit authors, suggesting there are others who seek to profit from it. 

"Media sources have speculated that the long arm of Disney had a hand in the passage of the law. The first Mickey Mouse cartoon was set to enter the public domain in 2003, and characters such as Donald Duck and Goofy would have followed shortly after."

The actions of the Disney Corporation are hypocritical. It is now well known that Walt Disney himself 'borrowed' many of his stories from others including the Brothers Grimm and Steamboat Bill.Jr; all of which is discussed in Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.

It is unfair to benefit from the freedom provided by certain sections of copyright law and then turn around and fight to take that same freedom away from others. Disney has not only pushed to extend copyrights, they have also forced daycare centers to take down drawings of Disney characters on at least three occasions. 

Quoted in an article on xomba, spokesperson Chuck Champlin said:

"If we were to allow them to use the characters, then we would have to allow everyone else to do so. If we don't protect our trademarks, we could lose our copyright and be out of business."

Hopefully this classic slippery slope argument doesn't convince you any more than it did me. I'm left to wonder what would have happened if Walt Disney hadn't been allowed to borrow ideas from others because they had a large group of sophisticated lawyers threatening legal action. 

Let's be clear, Walt Disney (Corp.) wasn't a pirate, he was a hypocritical pirate. 

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Kevin Kelly and Generatives

In his famous article, Better than Free, Kevin Kelly talks about eight Generatives.

Generatives

Immediacy Personalization Interpretation Authenticity Accessibility Embodiment Patronage Findability

Kevin Kelly said,

“There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.”

Kevin Kelly’s latest book is called What Technology Wants. You can find a copy of it here on Amazon.ca.

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What Could Be Better Than Free?

                                                             Photo Credit: Vitamin English on Wordpress

An article entitled "Better than Free" by Kevin Kelly, discusses the benefits of paying for materials that are otherwise available for free. So why would anyone pay for something, be it a film, book, or piece of music, when they can in fact get it for free?

He argues that some things we place value on can't be bought, things like immediacy and authenticity, which he calls generatives. While he makes an interesting case, I for one am not convinced that the advantages presented by these generatives outweigh the costs one would have to assume. 

Sure, I have heard countless people complain that the song they downloaded free and illegally was of poor quality or that they had trouble finding it; but I've heard this phrase much more often: "I can't wait too see that movie, but I'll have to because I can't afford the theater."

While Kelly makes a good point he seems to overlook the fact that many people (or is it just students?) can't just make the choice to pay for something no matter how attractive it is made to look. In these cases, it's not that people don't want to pay for things, it's that they can't afford it.

Rent, tuition, credit card debt, car loans, kids...

To them it's easier to put up with the bugs and the temporary guilt that comes from obtaining things freely and illegally. I'm convinced, that at least for some people, the choice resembles something like this: either I pirate it or I do without.

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response1: Google: Enriching or Encroaching?

Nicholas Carrs' article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" raises important questions about  the worlds' most popular website. He argues that searching online rather than through oldschool methods changes the way we gather and process information perhaps leading to a change in the very way we think. This thought has crossed my mind as I'm sure it has many people, and I believe the fear some of us have is very real.  Online search engines like Google lead us to know little about a large range of issues, so that one may be able to make mention of something they have read online but in most cases they are unable to discuss it on a profound level let alone offer their perspective on it. This is explained within the article by Developmental Psychologist Maryanne Wolf who says that deep reading is very much like deep thinking. When one reads a number of pages uninterrupted they go into a state of deep reflection allowing them to make connections, associations and develop a profound understanding of the reading material .If one reads online they are more likely to read a series of shorter articles even as they may be doing other things like listening to music, downloading . etc.  Because the way we read has changed so has the way we think because we are making these deep connections less and less often. This means that when we read something we might not even stop to ask ourselves what we think about it and so we become passive recipients of the online message : skim and click to next link.